


A Rural Drive-In Outside of Portland, ME

by Honorable_mention



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Character Study, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Fix-It, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-26
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-17 02:53:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29710536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Honorable_mention/pseuds/Honorable_mention
Summary: Richie contemplates his feelings for Eddie after Derry.One moment in Richie and Eddie’s life post-Derry.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak & Richie Tozier, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 1
Kudos: 24





	A Rural Drive-In Outside of Portland, ME

Like most good things it ebbed and flowed, a gentle wave cresting beneath his fingernails and coursing through his veins. If you asked him when it started he couldn’t tell you. Maybe it was when he was a kid, first watching Eddie fuss over one of their friend’s scraped knees. Maybe it was one day during the in-between years, some soggy night when he closed his eyes and imagined a face inches out of his grasp. Maybe it was when they first met up again, maybe a week ago, maybe he only realized it then.

But Richie wanted nothing more than to grab onto Eddie and never let him go, to steal his warmth and find out what his stubble felt like in the early morning before he shaved.

They were in some rural drive-in outside of Portland. They had the windows rolled down and the air was cool, the muggy heat of Summer already fleeing into the pines, replaced by the metallic chill of Autumn nights up North. Somewhere a bird screeched and kids scrambled over a rusting play-set barely visible in the rear view window. Their voices were high and the swings seemed inches from crashing down to Earth, but still they yelled and pushed each other higher.

It was getting dark. There was still a hint of smoky purple in the air, though the sun had set fifteen or twenty minutes ago and the stars were beginning to stretch and yawn and traipse across the sky.

Eddie played with the car radio, fiddling with the knobs and cursing under his breath.

“I don’t know why you had to rent such a junker.”

“Oh come on. It’s not that bad, more of an,” Richie flicked his hand in a demonstratively, “antique.”

Eddie slammed the palm of his hand on the radio and it fizzled to life, spewing out static. “Never should have let you pick the car.”

“Sorry I’m not a suburban dad with minivan tastes.”

“You’ll catch me dead before you catch me in the suburbs. You should know that by now.”

Richie pretended to clutch his chest like a scandalized Victorian. “Too close to home buddy, too close to home.”

“I’m the one who almost died. I’m entitled to an elegy or two.”

“Oh, bringing out the fancy words. Mr. “I Graduated College” over here.”

Eddie stuck out his tongue in a very sophisticated manner. A man in the car next to them was pulling chairs out of his trunk, sticking them around a beer cooler. He waved a couple people over as they crowded out of a beat-up car and jogged across the dirt lot.

“I hope they aren’t planning to drive drunk. You might as well ask to get wrapped around a tree at that point,” Eddie scoffed.

“You should go try to sell them insurance if you think they’re gonna need it so bad.”

“We both know that isn’t my job.”

“I think it would be a better gig than whatever depressing thing you’re doing now.”

“Risk analysis.”

“You know I forget on purpose, right?” He pulled a bag of corn nuts out from under the seat and offered them to Eddie, who turned them down. Richie shrugged and tossed one in his mouth, earning a horrified stare. “Anyway it doesn’t matter. This is rural Maine. They fine you if you’re driving with a blood-alcohol level below point-oh-eight.”

“Not that you’d know, of course,” Eddie said, still playing with the volume controls.

“Fucking TMZ, spilling all the juicy gossip I was going to make you ferret out.”

“Shouldn’t have driven drunk then if you didn’t want dirty laundry.”

“Once again, it was 2006. The iPhone didn’t even exist back then. Can you imagine?”

Eddie reached over and fumbled to shush him. There was a flick of light, a few clicks, and the drive-in’s ads and warnings began to play across the screen. 

Night had fully set outside and under the noise pouring from the radio Richie could hear the chatter of crickets. Sometimes a lightning bug would flicker outside, but Richie has read somewhere that they were dying off, and anyway this wasn’t the season for them.

“It’s just the trailers, we can still talk,” Richie mumbled, taking a sip from the flat Dr. Pepper in his cup holder.

“God, how long has that been there?”

“Neither of us want to know. But now that you mention it, that actually reminds me-”

“Rich, whatever you’re about to say, I don’t want to hear it. Now be quiet, I’m getting ready to watch some awful horror movie.”

“As if I won’t be providing a running commentary good enough to put Mystery Science Theater 3000 to shame.”

Eddie shook his head. “A man can dream.”

They were quiet for a moment, and then Eddie told him they were going to rate all the trailers. Thumbs up for the ones they’d go to see together, thumbs down for the ones that looked too awful to even make fun of.

They stayed like that, teasing each other's rankings and squeezing under the blankets they’d stolen from Mike’s old house. He wasn’t going to want them when he drove away into the great unknown anyway.

Before Richie knew it the movie had started and Eddie was watching, transfixed, at the awful shaky cam and FX make-up. But Richie was more concerned with watching Eddie himself, his face in profile and framed against the lazy night.

The scar was still on his cheek. A jagged, uneven pink ridge. Somehow the gaping chest wound had healed better. Richie would never admit it, not with his thumbs screwed and his eyeballs lacerated, but the scar gave Eddie a ruggish charm that he more than pulled off. You wouldn’t expect it from a man with that many polo shirts, but people were often surprising.

After the shitshow that was Derry, the clown and the months at the hospital, he and Eddie had packed all their stuff, Eddie’s luggage and Richie’s duffle bag and everything they took from Mike’s apartment, into one of three rental cars available in Derry. It was, to put it nicely, squat. The gas mileage wouldn’t have impressed anyone after World War II and the rusted doors sometimes threatened to fall off entirely. Richie was smitten upon first glance. Eddie hated it, at least he said he did, but he’d let Richie drive him to the Portland airport.

They’d been sitting in the car for five minutes, maybe ten minutes, just sitting there with each of their tickets in their hands, when Eddie first brought it up. 

“You know, we don’t have to go back.”

“My manager will be worried about me.”

“But will he care?”

Richie tapped his fingers on the steering wheel and watched the occasional car rush by.

“I mean really, Richie, what do we have to go back to?”

He thought about it a moment, let the small town airport smell of diesel and cut grass itch into his nose. “There always was a lot I wanted to do. Back when we were kids. Stuff I never got around to, I don’t know why. And if we’re in Maine anyway we might as well make it a trip.”

“I’d like to have some nice memories here, some that don’t involve me being shish-kabobed.”

“Can you really use that as a verb?”

Eddie had shrugged and smiled and rolled down his window, moving to throw the ticket out. Then he thought better of it, rolled up the window, and neatly folded the ticket into the inner pocket of his coat.

And here they were, three weeks later, at a rural drive-in outside of Portland.

And Richie could feel that wave, that crunch of emotion in his chest, telling him to pay attention to Eddie. To hold him and laugh at him and cry to him and be needy as hell. 

He wasn’t going to do anything about it right now. There was a time and a place for that, later, but at this instant he’d gladly savor the chance to just be next to Eddie.

And, if he clung to his arm and moved a little closer after each jump-scare, well, that was his business alone.

**Author's Note:**

> I’m back! It’s been a hot second but I’m still here. This is just something short to get back into the habit of writing, but I hope y’all like it!
> 
> I have a couple upcoming stories for both IT and Spider-Man (plus I should really finish my Umbrella Academy fic...) so look out for those!
> 
> As always I hope all of y’all have an amazing day! :)


End file.
